Here are the steps in which I want to do this:
The problem exists in Step 3. I can't figure out a way to extract the gif's first frame. I would prefer to use GraphicsMagick but if there is another way you know of that works, I would be most grateful!
NodeJS is being used.
Since I couldn't get it working on the server-side, I ended up just drawing the .gif to a <canvas> element to "simulate" extracting a .gif's first frame. This gave me the paused gif that I was going for.